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Contributed open letter to the Clarksville City Council by Brian DeSantis, president of the Clarksville Soccer Club:
I am writing to you to express our strong opposition to Councilman Richard Garrett’s resolution to take $14 million from the Exit 8 Athletic Complex and reallocating those funds toward a project in North Clarksville. The soccer community, the football community and the lacrosse community have fought for nearly a decade to add quality fields to the Clarksville Parks and Recreation inventory to meet our needs due to the growth of Clarksville and Montgomery County and the increase in participation in youth sports associated with that growth.
The Exit 8 Athletic Complex is not a concept. The complex has land, an approved design that was provided to the people of Clarksville for public comment, and more than $1 million already invested by the city. The construction on the project is ready to begin this year. Kids would be on those fields playing the sports they love in less than two years, perhaps even next year. The Exit 8 Athletic Complex meets a need, is approved, and is ready to begin. Taking that $14 million and pulling the plug on the project now would be irresponsible.
This is especially true when looking at what Garrett is proposing to do with the money. He wants to allocate those funds to a project that has no land purchased to build the project on, no approved design (or even a design that is ready to be put forth for public comment), and no cost estimate. This is not good stewardship of taxpayer dollars. This is taking money from a project that will benefit the Clarksville community almost immediately and putting those funds toward nothing more than a very broad concept lacking in any details.
I also want to clear up what may be a misconception. Allocating $14 million to a project in North Clarksville will not make the project go faster. The process remains the same. The construction for any recreation center is still at least two years away from even starting. In fact this attempt to kill the Exit 8 Athletic Complex and then trying to placate those who support that complex by adding 10 acres to a North Clarksville Regional Recreation Center as an afterthought only delays purchasing any land or funding any design plans for the center. Additionally not mentioned or acknowledged at the City Council Executive Meeting is that there is $500,000 in this year’s budget for moving a proposed facility in North Clarksville forward, funds that are yet to be spent.
Heritage Park was built in 1994 to accommodate approximately 1,500 kids on eight full-sized soccer fields. Between the Clarksville Soccer Club, the Clarksville Soccer Club Player Development Program and Academy, the Montgomery County Soccer Association, the Montgomery County Middle School Soccer League, the Clarksville Adult Soccer League, the Montgomery County Youth Soccer Academy, Clarksville Academy, Clarksville Christian Academy and the Hispanic Soccer League, that soccer complex now has to accommodate over 4,000 soccer players. Additionally, not all of those fields can be used at night when teams practice and play games because the Heritage Park Soccer Complex does not have enough lighting for all the fields.
A full size soccer field is almost 2 acres in size, not including the area for benches on the player side or the seating area for spectators on the opposite side. This also does not include the area needed to move in between fields. The idea that the inventory of soccer fields can be significantly increased on 10 acres of land, especially when the council started talking about football fields and lacrosse fields coexisting on those 10 acres, is not reality. Not mentioned in this discussion was the addition of baseball fields, another area of need for this city. Also not mentioned were the outdoor bathrooms, a concession area, pavilions, a walking trail and an outdoor special needs playground. All of those amenities are part of the Athletic Complex. Adding any of those items already promised to the people of Clarksville via the Athletic Complex would impact the space available for playing surfaces. All of this highlights the fact there is no actual plan for the Regional Recreation Center. There is no layout. There is nothing to present to the people of Clarksville to explain in detail how $14 million would be spent or what these 20 acres of property will look like or contain. Lastly, there has been no deliberate debate in your own body (similar to the debates regarding the Exit 8 Athletic Complex) regarding what each of you think is important for this project to encompass in order to benefit your community. Right now, the discussion for this recreation center has focused on athletics. Perhaps a recreation center should also have an art and music component or classrooms for extra-curricular education programs or even an entertainment area for those kids who do not participate in athletics.
None of this is to say the soccer community does not see a need for a North Clarksville Regional Recreation Center. We do. In fact, we support the project as strongly as many of you do. Many of the kids in the Clarksville and Montgomery County soccer organizations would use such a facility. So would the football, baseball and lacrosse communities. But nobody in the Clarksville soccer community supports that project at the expense of what has already been promised to the families of this city and county and the time and investments already made.
Lastly, the kids in this community who play soccer have to travel to Gallatin, Hendersonville, Nashville and Murfreesboro to play on soccer fields of the quality they deserve. I found the idea that someone’s spouse having the ability to buy a Coach purse at an outlet mall closer to home being just as or more important than high quality soccer, lacrosse and football fields for the kids of Clarksville to be particularly disturbing. Over 25% of the families in the Clarksville Soccer Club receive financial aid for their registration, club fee and uniform. These are families that need the club’s help just so their kids can play a sport they love. We have single mothers who make less than $15,000 a year. We have families trying to provide a sports experience for their children on a lower-enlisted soldier’s salary. The cost of a Coach purse would certainly go a long way for some kids to be able to play soccer or any other sport. So I ask the councilmen and women to keep that in mind when publicly discussing ideas of how the valuable property of Clarksville can best be used to serve the people.
Please vote against Councilman Garrett’s resolution 79-2020-21 to kill the Exit 8 Athletic Complex.
Brian DeSantis